Horror vacui (art)

Adolf Wölfli : The Skt.Wandanna Cathedral in Band-Hain, 1910

Horror vacui ( Latin for fear of emptiness ) describes in art the desire to fill all empty surfaces, especially in painting and in relief, with representations or ornaments.

use

The term goes back to Aristotle ( Physics , Chapter IV 6–9.) Who used horror vacui (Greek: kenophobia ) to describe the phenomenon that nature knows no vacuum . Transferred to art, the term was first used by the Italian art critic Mario Praz , who used it to describe overloaded works of Victorian art.

The term is also used for the fullness and splendor of the baroque .

In contrast, in the art of the 20th century there is increasingly the courage to use open space as a counterpoint to the fear of emptiness.

Web links

• The great art lexicon by PW Hartmann

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lexicon of Art, Volume III: Greg – Konv , EA Seemann Verlag, Leipzig 2004 (p. 342)
2. ^ Books.google.de: Barock, a place of memory